You Observe A Lot Just By Watching - Then What?

Learned 2 things from this pic:men are taller than women; wh… on Twitpic

Scott McDuffee referenced the “Yogi-ism” the other day, that you see a lot just by watching or observing. When we teach people Lean in hospitals, half of thebattle is “Learningto See“the waste that surrounds them in their processes and work. There’s a good reason that the famous book by Rother and Shook (from the LEI) isn’t called “Learning toValue Stream Map” — learning to see is a critical skill. You haveto see problems and then (also important) FIX things.

The link at the top of the post is a picture I took at a hospitalyesterday, click below for a slightly larger view (the image is of somewhat crap-tastic quality, taken with my BlackBerry):

Look at the metal push plates on the doors. One thing I learned is that men are generally taller than women based on where they push (OK, I already knew that fact, but this confirms it). People are tending to push ABOVE the metal plate, wearing away the stain on the door, increasing costs to the hospital if they repaint the door often, or it looks bad and unkempt right off their main lobby (thanks to @opexdirect on twitter for some thoughts on that).

Now we’re speculating, since Ididn’t talk to anyone about the issue (it was just something that caught my eye in passing). Is the right solution to just repaint the door every year? What else could we do to “fix” this in thelong term? What’s a better countermeasure?

I have a few ideas, but what do you think? Click comments to shareyour ideas.

What behavior would you want to see in your organization if this was you? What response would you want from the maintenance team if they saw this or if they spent time repairing the problem?